“It is just to spite us,” whispered Loveday furiously.
But Aaron did not speak; he was really puzzled and alarmed. Thoughts were working so fast in his brain, too, that he could not catch one and put it into words. Loveday grew annoyed and half frightened by his silence.
“What do you think it is? Who do you think did it? Aaron, speak! Are you frightened? Do you think it is something that will hurt us?”
But in answer to all her eager questions, Aaron only said at last:
“I dunno; I don’t like the looks on it.”
Loveday was really rather alarmed, but to find Aaron even more so, and without a word to encourage her, made her very cross again.
“I don’t like the looks of all that cord,” she said, “and I’m going to cut it all, just to let them see that I am not afraid of them. I am not a coward.”
Poor Aaron! It was a little hard on him, for he really had begun to feel a horrible dread that it might not, after all, have been piskies’ mischief that they were undoing, but some real person’s careful work, and he was just beginning to say so when they heard quick footsteps coming along the path towards them, and, looking up, saw an elderly, grey-haired man with a very white and angry face and a pair of eyes with a look in them which filled Loveday’s little heart with alarm.
“It’s Mr. Winter!” gasped Aaron.
That news did not increase Loveday’s alarm; it rather lessened it, in fact, for, in the first place, she wanted very much to see this mysterious person, and, in the second place, she had always a feeling that sad people were never very angry about anything: they were too gentle, and had so much else to think about. But Mr. Winter soon undeceived her.